A marine and his rifle
by Ovid's Sorrow
Summary: An American soldier finds himself stranded on a Japanese occupied island with nothing more than his M1 Garand. Are there others? How will he escape the island?
1. What Happened? Revised

_**A MARINE AND HIS RIFLE**_

I awoke to the sound of something burning. As I slowly opened my heavy eyelids, I found myself face down in the sand. I lifted my head off the soft earth and spat out sand that had gotten inside of my mouth. As I did this, I felt a cold sensation run up my pant legs. I shivered as I looked back and saw an endless body of water.

I thought, '_The Ocean… but… how did I get here?_'

I looked back ahead of me and found out that I was on a coast of some island. I continued to look and saw a large piece of metal to my left and even more to my right. I stood up on my legs and winced in pain as I put pressure on my left leg. I inspected it and found an obstruction imbedded into my Femur bone, and even more in my right arm I ripped a piece of cloth off my uniform and wrapped it around the puncture wound to stop any bleeding.

I once again stood on my feet, careful not to stretch the wound. I limped towards the wreckage. The first thing that caught the attention of my eye was the bullet holes… so many bullet holes.

I slowly peered over the edge and saw between eight to ten bodies sprawled all over the floor in the machine. Many of them were missing limbs and blood was everywhere from top to bottom of the interior.

'_Must have been a troop ship….' _I thought.

I limped to the back and walked up the ramp inside the troop ship. I searched the first soldier. I first looked for a dog tag. His name was Wilkinson, Gary Wilkinson. I looked blow his name and found his battalion, the 167th. I made a quick check to my dog tag, and saw the same numbers engraved on it, 167th battalion.

'_He was in my squad? Then the rest are too…' _I thought.

In the center of the mess there was a large hole through the metal floor of the ship. It extended two feet into sand.

My cloudy memory started to clear and I started to have a flashback….

_Flashback….._

_6 hours ago_

Troop ships were deployed from the destroyer _Carolina _headed for the Japanese controlled island. It was rumored that the island was a fortress base for the Japs and it was also very close to the islands of Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

Inside the troop ship of the 167th, the sergeant was prepping his squad:

"Squad listen up, we are heading towards Tojo's fortress today. The eyes of America watch and wait upon you. Good luck gentlemen."

The vehicle started to move.

_Splash_

The vehicle hit the water and started towards the beach. As the coast came into view, artillery started to pound the water. Many of the men were scared, including me. If a shell hit the ship, we would be doomed. Sure enough, some ships near the boat were hit directly and disappeared with their crews into an inferno of flame and smoke.

The ship was now a mile from the shore and machine guns started to open up on the ship.

"30 seconds till landing!" The driver of the small boat said.

"Here we go." The sergeant said.

The boat continued to inch towards the coast. Bullets flew over our heads as the driver shouted "10 SECONDS!"

As the boat landed on the beach the driver pulled the lever and the hatch opened. Then, everything went blank.

_Back to Present_

I continued to stare at the mangled scene in front of me; I heard the sound of crunching sand to the left of the boat. I quickly limped to the other side of the troop ship and took out my Garand. I looked around the corner and looked towards the sound.

Seconds passed…. 1….2….3….

A foot came into view around the corner of the troop ship opposite my position. I fired a round. It missed and hit the sand 6 inches from the intended target. The foot jumped back and I heard a voice, "O SHIT!"

I aimed my rifle down. English? Definitely not Tojo…

I whispered towards the troop ship, "Thunder!"

For five seconds a response never came. I tried again, only louder.

This time I got the answer I was looking for, "Flash!"

I saw five men, dressed in American uniforms, pop out from the other troop ship. I limped into the open to greet them.

"Thought I was the only one here!" I said as I shook hands with the leader.

"So did we. I'm Sgt. O'Malley. The man standing beside me is Mclowsky, second in command of the squad, the other is Franklin, he is the medic, the man behind me is Hoover, he is the engineer, and the man on the far left..well I really don't know what his name is."

The man who the sergeant had pertained to stared awkwardly at him. He remained silent and only stared at O'Malley. It kinda creeped me out…..

I decided to break the awkward silence and said as terse as possible, "What now?"

O'Malley looked back at me and said blankly, "Kill Tojo…"

**Well, I finally got finished with the REVISED first chapter, sorry for those who had read the original and thanks to those who reviewed the story. They gave me the confidence to continue it.**

**Once again, thanks.**

**Fire Emblem Fanatic 101**


	2. What Now?

**Hey, wazzup everybody? Opid's Sorrow. It's been a while. Anyway, here is a new chapter. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the right to Call of Duty. Infinity Ward holds the rights. But not Treyarch… they suck.**

As these words were said, a loud crack of a rifle tore away the silence. Blood spattered and stained the pure white sand below my boots as I dove for cover. I hit the sand and realized the beach was wide and open, with no obstruction to cover my exposed self.

"_Shit__**." **_I thought to myself, as another crack ripped the air. A geyser of sand erupted 3 feet to my right, implying the bullet's impact. I thought for sure that he would see me and aim for my vitals, but instead, another crack rang in the air. However, this one sounded much different from the first.

I turned my head to the direction of the sound and found O'Malley next to the corpse of Mclowsky. He held in his hand a M1 Garand standard issue rifle. He fired off another round and yelled to us.

"**GO! GET TO THE TREELINE! I'LL DISTRACT HIM!"**

I pulled myself off the ground but reeled in pain and fell back onto the sand. I knew I wouldn't be able to move myself in this condition. My best bet was to stay down and try not to move. Impersonate the other corpses. Make him _think _I was dead.

I lay there on this foreign land…far from safety…on the land held by the very people trying to **kill **me and any other poor bastard who decided to show his face. O'Malley kept pumping rounds into the tree that the assailant was hidden. Then he would shoot back at him.

It was an unbroken cycle; O'Malley, Tojo, O'Malley, Tojo, a never ending game of cat and mouse. And I was caught in the middle of it.

To hands came over me in the heat of all this. I looked up and saw the silent, and nameless, soldier dragging me towards the jungle of predators. It was then that the assailant turned his sights on us. He pointed his rifle and fired directly at us. He missed, luckily, and O'Malley was able to pick him off after a lengthy standoff.

O'Malley promptly set his rifle down, walked back to Mclowsky's corpse, and removed his tag and chain around his neck. He then approached me and the silent avenger and helped in the arduous task of heaving my lumbering body to a place safer than the beach.

_**Later On…**_

I have been conscious for five minutes and everything was already going to shit…as if it hadn't already. We now sat in the jungle with no idea where to go, not even close to enough supplies to feed us for our survival, and a very hard and awkward time communicating with each other.

The situation seemed hopeless. O'Malley paced from to and thro, pondering our next move. Franklin tended my wounds while Hoover, who had scavenged a radio from a corpse, was trying his best to get it working again. The silent avenger only sat there, lying against a fallen tree this entire time, contributing absolute zip to the cause. I stared at him for the longest of time. It was immensely awkward to even stare at him, let alone speak to him.

"Freaks you out too, doesn't it?" Franklin asked me as he attempted to remove the shrapnel from my leg.

"Hmmm? What?" I answered in reply.

"Him. He never speaks. Never contributes to the group only shoots his gun and keeps to himself."

"Well, that's what a marine is supposed to do, isn't it? Sure, he doesn't socialize like others. But that doesn't mean he is any less of a marine."

"Yeah well try having him in your squad from day one and YOU tell me otherwise after that. Now hold still." Franklin jerks his body away from me and a sharp pang of pain emits from my leg.

"Ow! You know you could have warned me better than that!"

"I did. What do you think I meant by hold still."

"There are many reasons why you would say that! Next time just say 'I will now extract this obstruction from the patient' or some shit like that. Ya know medical talk."

"All right, I'll take that to heart. Now hold still."

"Alright. OW! You son of a bitch…"

"Alright, you're good. Let me just wrap you up in some fresh linen." Franklin tore a piece of his uniform with his combat knife and wrapped it around the wounds. "And there you are. You can run now, but you WILL feel pain. I recommend taking it easy for at least the rest of the day to let the wounds close up."

"Yes mom." I got up slowly, trying not to aggravate my wounds. I slowly walked towards Hoover to see what the progress on the radio was going. As I got closer, Hoover looked up from his experiment.

"Ah…I need an extra set of hands. Come here." I walked slowly over to him and sat down.

"I need you to hold these wires out of my seeing space. I need to see if there is damage to the transistor."

I reached inside the machine to remove the wires. Hoover peered inside slightly and reached for his pack. He pulled out a small wrench and started to clank around the inside. After a minute, he pulled back and retrieved what looked like a box like object with two holes, one through the right corner, the other through the center. When Hoover brought it towards him, he let out an exasperated sigh.

"What's that?" I asked him, feeling worried that the box was in fact very essential to the radio.

"That's the transistor. Without it the radio is useless. We'll have to find another radio, maybe Japanese or a confiscated American radio in one of their huts. But this one, no. It's dead."

"You're telling me that that little box is what keeps that radio going?" I asked. I was surprised that such a small and insignificant object could be so important.

"Yes."

"Well, what about the antennae? Couldn't we use that?"

Hoover laughed. "If I had a penny for every time I heard that one. I would be rich and wouldn't have to be here. But sadly, life isn't like that. No, the antennae sends out and receives signals from other radios in the area which the transistor collects and sends those same messages and allows us to interpret what the others are saying. The

"So your saying that that thing is much more important than the antennae?" I asked, not understanding some of what he said.

"Basically, the antennae pinpoint the direction the signals go. The transistor is the object that gets those that others send."

"Alright." At this time O'Malley came over to us.

"Men, I have a plan. Do you remember the other landings along the island?"

"Yes," Hoover replied, "One North, Northwest, and South of us. Why?"  
"All we have to do is link up with one of the other landings and we will be home free."

"It took you all that time just to figure that out?" I replied.

"No. I am still trying to figure out how we get there without getting blown to bits or getting our limbs hacked off."

"Well, yes," interjected Franklin. "We can't just 'Gun-Ho' it like the rest. We have to be careful and sneak around the bases and outposts in the area."

"The radio is dead by the way. Otherwise we would be able to call in for help." Hoover said.

"Well," O'Malley said, "We can figure the rest in the morning. Get some shut eye. We wake up at 0600 hours."

I hadn't even realized it was getting late. I was still going through all that had happened in the past few hours: A death of a comrade, a near-death experience, and transistors. All were too much to take in in one day.

I found a patch of sand near the camp. The air was cold, as was the sand, but we could not run the risk of building a fire, lest the Japanese find us and kill us in our sleep.

I shivered for a while on the cold, alien ground below me. I tried thinking of other things like beaches and waterfalls, but all reminded me of this place and the dangers that lurk in them. SO I turned my thoughts to my hometown in Vermont. I thought of the warm summers my family and I used to share together; swimming in the cool springs, drinking lemonade with my friends, watching baseball with my father.

It was all so far away from me. But I could still feel them in my mind as if they were right there with me. And for the first time since I found myself on the frontlines, I slept soundly.

**Well, there you have it. A new chapter. Be sure to tune in for more, and be on the lookout for any new stories that may pop up on the way**


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